Foundations
by 1alucard1
Summary: Oliver and Felicity are shaken after the events in the finale and have trouble sleeping. Olicity. Angst turning into a hurt/comfort story. Complete. Please read and review!
1. Chapter 1

Oliver was sitting on the bed in his big empty room in the mansion.

He'd somehow managed to bring Tommy's body to the overflowing morgue in the still standing hospital. He just couldn't bear the thought of him lying discarded under the rubble.

He'd managed to check on Felicity and make sure Diggle got medical attention. He'd managed to offer a shoulder to cry on for a hysterical Thea. He'd managed to tend to his wounds and have a shower.

He'd managed to sit down on his bed.

So, when the shaking started, he couldn't help but feel betrayed by his body. After all, he had seen friends die before. He was used to having a tight rein on his emotions since the island. This was not how things were supposed to be.

For some reason, the shaking started in his left hand. He immediately grabbed it with his right hand to stop it, but this only made it worse, as he started shaking all over.

The last few hours were a haze. Since the moment he carried Tommy out of the rubble, he hadn't cried or allowed himself to think. He'd just made a list of tasks in his mind and went through them on autopilot. But now he had run out of items and was gripped by a sudden and utter hopelessness.

He didn't see any sense anymore in his crusade. What had he really accomplished? Any good he had done seemed small compared to the desolation he had witnessed today. Any impact he had made seemed buried in the rubble. What was the point of it all? He couldn't even protect the people closest to him. He felt worthless.


	2. Chapter 2

Felicity stared at the ceiling of her tiny apartment. The sun was coming up outside and in defiance of last night's events, it looked to be a bright day.

Felicity had dropped into bed hours earlier completely exhausted, thinking that she would fall asleep the moment her head hit the pillow. Unfortunately, that had not worked out as planned. She kept replaying the events in her head again and again. She knew in her heart that there was nothing she could have done differently, yet she kept thinking through each of her steps and wondering at which point she should have realized that there might be a second device.

Usually, obsessing about details helped her to improve and do a better job next time. She was nothing if not a perfectionist. However, she had a feeling that her obsessive streak would not be a good thing in this case, but could only lead to a self-destructive guilt trip.

Her thoughts were turning in circles. What could we have done differently? What could I have done differently? She remembered everything with complete clarity. The conversation with detective Lance, the moment of terror when the second device went off. The fear before she knew with certainty that Oliver and John were still alive.

But most of all, she remembered walking through the streets of a city she had known all her live and thinking herself in a war zone. It was beyond comprehension. Even now, lying in her bed, the pictures of the destroyed city seemed unreal to her, a scene from a disaster movie or a news cast from a country far, far away.

Yet she knew if she would walk to the window, she could still see the fires burning outside.

She turned restlessly on her other side. Already, the sheets were a tangled mess about her from all the tossing and turning of the last hours. She was seriously considering to just knock herself out with a bottle of liqueur at this point. Well, to knock herself out with the liqueur, not the bottle.

She finally gave up, jumped out of bed and started pacing the room. Maybe a little exercise would help to get her sleepy. Although, to be fair, she was already feeling pretty much at the end of her physical strength. She needed a distraction for her mind. She dropped on her couch with a sigh and started hunting for the remote.

When she turned on the TV, there were pictures of the destruction in the Glades on every channel. Well, on every channel except for two of the local stations which had been close to the epicenter. Those were showing only an emergency broadcast message promising that the stations would be back on air as soon as possible and advising not to panic.

Felicity considered that some pretty solid advice right there, but she wasn't sure anymore if she could follow it if she didn't get some quality sleep soon. She sighed again and turned the TV off.

She almost fell off her couch in surprise at the first ring of her phone. She hadn't even realized that she was still scared, but apparently even now, she was still expecting the walls to come down or the ground to give in under her feet.

She went over to the table wondering who would call her at the crack of dawn. She stared at the caller I.D. in disbelief for a moment. It was Oliver. She had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that he would not be calling at this time with good news. As far as he knew, she was deep asleep and getting some much needed rest.

She realized that while she had been lost in thought, the phone had been ringing for quite some time. She hurriedly answered it, expecting the worst.


	3. Chapter 3

"Um, hey"

The voice sounded so much unlike Oliver that Felicity automatically took the phone away from her ear and stared at the name on the display in disbelief. He sounded lost and unsure. If she had to describe it, she would have said it sounded like the opposite of his gruff Hood voice.

"Oliver, are you okay? Do you need my help with something?" As soon as she had said it she thought it was a stupid thing to ask. How could he be okay after what had happened?

Oliver had gotten the shaking mostly under control but he was still holding on to the phone as if it was a log and he was lost at sea (again). He considered for a second to tell her the truth, but even in his own mind "I just called to hear your voice." just sounded too cheesy to say out loud. He wasn't even sure he was ready to admit it to himself, let alone Felicity. He probably would have been standing in front of her apartment right now if he had found any justification at all for coming there.

"No, I just wanted to make sure that you got home okay and if there was anything you needed."

Felicity sat back down on the couch because for some reason her legs were feeling shaky. Oliver had always been protective of her but more in a "I'll kill anyone who hurts you" kind of way. Now he sounded concerned and tired and above all scared. She was not sure how to handle this new Oliver.

"I'm fine. I just can't seem to get any sleep. I think on some level I haven't really processed what happened yesterday. Doesn't it seem unreal to you?"

Oliver suddenly saw a flash of Tommy with the steel spiked through his chest. The memory was as clear as if he were experiencing it right now. He drew in a sharp breath.

"Could we talk about something else?"

"Um, sure, any suggestions?"

"Cures for insomnia maybe? I could use one of those as well."

"Well, my mother always used to tell me to drink warm milk with honey. Mostly when I came running to her because I watched a horror movie late at night that I wasn't supposed to be watching." Felicity smiled at the memory. It felt good to talk about normal everyday things instead of thinking about the destruction in the city.

"I think we might have passed the scope of what a warm milk with honey can accomplish. This looks more like a job for scotch. Huh, I didn't really think about it but I actually haven't been drunk since I came back. I probably have a pretty low tolerance for alcohol by now."

Felicity felt relieved. Oliver seemed gradually more and more collected while they were talking, the voice of the small scared little boy almost completely gone now.

"So, did you sneak away in the middle of the night to watch horror movies you shouldn't have been watching when you were a kid?"

"All the time. We had a tradition. Whenever" She could hear him stop and take a deep breath. "Whenever Tommy came over, we used to stay up until the middle of the night, watching whatever we could get our hands on. One night, my mother caught us in the attic. We had set up a kind of video room there that nobody knew about but us, anyway, she must have gotten up for some reason and heard the movie..."

Felicity lay down on the couch and closed her eyes while she listened to Oliver's tales about his childhood. He told her about his father. He told her about the catastrophic fishing trip he'd had with his father and Tommy. He told her how he had been insanely jealous of the attention baby Thea got when she was born, but then one day he had looked into her crib and had been flooded with a sense of kinship that made him swear to himself to protect her, always. He told her about the life of a spoiled rich kid. But most of all he told her about his best friend in the world, Tommy Merlyn.

Felicity was fascinated, but she couldn't keep herself from slowly drifting off to sleep. Listening to Oliver made her feel safe and relaxed, both of which added to her sleepiness. She thought she could also hear Oliver's speech get more and more slurred from drowsiness, before she slipped away completely.

Nobody was there to see it, but if they had been, this is what they would have seen.

Felicity Smoak, fast asleep on her couch, her phone lying next to her head. Her breathing was even and her features were relaxed. If somebody would have been there, they would have said she looked astonishingly beautiful.

Oliver Queen, sleeping peacefully in a corner of his huge bed. He still held the phone in his right hand.

Outside, helicopters were flying and the city was burning. But at this moment, Oliver and Felicity had the bliss of not having to care about it. They would care about it for the weeks and months and maybe years to come, but not right now. Right now they were at peace.


End file.
